Kathleen Parker: Michelle Obama's wings

5:11 PM,
Mar. 1, 2013

Written by

Kathleen Parker

If second-term presidents feel liberated by re-election to pursue bolder agendas, first ladies often become more comfortable to be their own person.

Witness Laura Bush, who in her husband's second term discovered that she, too, had a voice and a bully pulpit. Seemingly overnight, she transformed herself from librarian to liberator, becoming a voice for oppressed women - from advocating for Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi, the democratic leader then under house arrest, to spearheading a women's health movement across the Middle East.